William (“Billy”) Lee

Portrait of Washington and Billy Lee by John Trumbull, 1780

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QUICK FACTS
BORN:
c. 1750
  DIED:
1828 at Mount Vernon, Virginia
Buried in the slave burial ground at Mount Vernon.

  • During the summer of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, with Washington presiding, Billy Lee stood behind his master’s chair and tended to his personal needs.
Portrait to come. See entry in Wikipedia. George Washington's long-time valet, William Lee, suffered two serious accidents in the 1780s which dislocated the knee caps of both legs, resulting in permanent disability. Because he could no longer perform his regular duties, Lee became the plantation's shoemaker instead.

 

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The Farm Book, plus the elaborate chronologies made by Jefferson scholars which document almost every day of his life, demonstrate that contrary to what Martha [Jefferson] Randolph told her sons, Jefferson was not only not distant from Sally Hemings but in the same house nine months before the births of each of her seven children, and that she conceived no children when he was not there.

Fawn M. Brodie
Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974)